When Creation Faces Work-Rationale. Aspirations, Disenchantment and Work Practices in the Video Game Industries.

In his famous Paris Manuscripts, Marx identified labor as the means through which human beings are able to affirm the essence of their individuality and create a transcendent bond with their community. However, he ruled out the possibility of labor exerting a significant influence on people's identities in capitalist societies, since its expressive functions are co-opted by an economic-instrumental rationality. This contradiction may still prevail, even in professional sectors that promise and are built upon values such as creativity and passion.

Despite the rhetoric of the new managerial discourses supported by the paradigm of passionate work, the exaltation of freedom, innovation, risk-taking or the greatness of the techno-entrepreneurial individual (Alonso & Fernández-Rodríguez, 2018; McRobbie, 2015), workers in the information and knowledge industries are subject to controls and demands that may hinder the articulation between personal vocation —as a constitutive element of their identity— and their professional practices (Linhart, 2019).

In this communication we explore these tensions experienced by people working in the creative industries. This research is based on 25 semi-structured interviews we conducted between 2023 and 2024 with workers in the video game industry, as an example of a passion-driven professional sector. We identify a complex tension between their professional aspirations and their desire to participate in the creation of a cultural artefact, and the limitations they encounter in their work experiences, which often lead them to abandon their aspirations for self-realization in their dream jobs.